Introduction to a
Critique of Urban Geography

Of all the affairs we participate in, with or without interest, the groping
quest for a
new way of life is the only thing that remains really exciting. Aesthetic and other
disciplines have proved glaringly inadequate in this regard and merit the greatest
indifference. We should therefore delineate some provisional terrains of observation,
including the observation of certain processes of chance and predictability in the
streets.

The word psychogeography, suggested by an illiterate Kabyle as a general term
for the phenomena a few of us were investigating around the summer of 1953, is not too
inappropriate. It is not inconsistent with the materialist perspective that sees
life and thought as conditioned by objective nature. Geography, for example, deals with the determinant
action of general natural forces, such as soil composition or climatic conditions, on the
economic structures of a society, and thus on the corresponding conception that such a
society can have of the world. Psychogeography sets for itself the study of the
precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, whether consciously
organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals. The charmingly vague
adjective psychogeographical can be applied to the findings arrived at by this
type of investigation, to their influence on human feelings, and more generally to any
situation or conduct that seems to reflect the same spirit of discovery.

It has long been said that the desert is monotheistic. Is it illogical or devoid of
interest to observe that the district in Paris between Place de la Contrescarpe and Rue de
lArbalète conduces rather to atheism, to oblivion and to the disorientation of
habitual reflexes?

Historical conditions determine what is considered useful. Baron
Haussmanns urban renewal of Paris under the Second Empire, for example, was
motivated by the desire to open up broad thoroughfares enabling the rapid circulation
of troops and the use of artillery against insurrections. But from any standpoint other
than that of facilitating police control, Haussmanns Paris is a city built by an
idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Present-day urbanisms main
problem is ensuring the smooth circulation of a rapidly increasing number of motor
vehicles. A future urbanism may well apply itself to no less utilitarian projects,
but in the rather different context of psychogeographical possibilities.

The present abundance of private automobiles is one of the most astonishing successes
of the constant propaganda by which capitalist production persuades the masses that car
ownership is one of the privileges our society reserves for its most privileged members.
But anarchical progress often ends up contradicting itself, as when we savor the spectacle
of a police chief issuing a filmed appeal urging Parisian car owners to use public
transportation.

We know with what blind fury so many unprivileged people are ready to defend their
mediocre advantages. Such pathetic illusions of privilege are linked to a general idea of
happiness prevalent among the bourgeoisie and maintained by a system of publicity that
includes Malrauxs aesthetics as well as Coca-Cola ads  an idea of
happiness whose crisis must be provoked on every occasion by every means.

The first of these means is undoubtedly the systematic provocative dissemination of a
host of proposals tending to turn the whole of life into an exciting game, combined with
the constant depreciation of all current diversions (to the extent, of course, that these
latter cannot be detourned to serve in constructions of more interesting ambiances). The
greatest difficulty in such an undertaking is to convey through these apparently
extravagant proposals a sufficient degree of serious seduction. To accomplish
this we can envisage an adroit use of currently popular means of communication. But a
disruptive sort of abstention, or demonstrations designed to radically frustrate the fans
of these means of communication, can also promote at little expense an atmosphere of
uneasiness extremely favorable for the introduction of a few new conceptions of pleasure.

The idea that the creation of a chosen emotional situation depends only on the thorough
understanding and calculated application of a certain number of concrete techniques
inspired this somewhat tongue-in-cheek Psychogeographical Game of the Week,
published in Potlatch #1:

In accordance with what you are seeking, choose a country, a large or small city, a
busy or quiet street. Build a house. Furnish it. Use decorations and surroundings to the
best advantage. Choose the season and the time of day. Bring together the most suitable
people, with appropriate records and drinks. The lighting and the conversation should
obviously be suited to the occasion, as should be the weather or your memories. If there
has been no error in your calculations, the result should prove satisfying.

We need to flood the market  even if for the moment merely the intellectual
market  with a mass of desires whose fulfillment is not beyond the capacity of
humanitys present means of action on the material world, but only beyond the
capacity of the old social organization. It is thus not without political interest to
publicly counterpose such desires to the elementary desires that are endlessly rehashed by
the film industry and in psychological novels like those of that old hack Mauriac. (As
Marx explained to poor Proudhon, In a society based on poverty, the poorest
products are inevitably consumed by the greatest number.)(1)

The revolutionary transformation of the world, of all aspects of the world, will
confirm all the dreams of abundance.

The sudden change of ambiance in a street within the space of a few meters; the evident
division of a city into zones of distinct psychic atmospheres; the path of least
resistance that is automatically followed in aimless strolls (and which has no relation
to the physical contour of the terrain); the appealing or repelling character of certain
places  these phenomena all seem to be neglected. In any case they are never
envisaged as depending on causes that can be uncovered by careful analysis and turned to
account. People are quite aware that some neighborhoods are gloomy and others pleasant.
But they generally simply assume that elegant streets cause a feeling of satisfaction and
that poor streets are depressing, and let it go at that. In fact, the variety of possible
combinations of ambiences, analogous to the blending of pure chemicals in an infinite
number of mixtures, gives rise to feelings as differentiated and complex as any other form
of spectacle can evoke. The slightest demystified investigation reveals that the
qualitatively or quantitatively different influences of diverse urban decors cannot be
determined solely on the basis of the historical period or architectural style, much less
on the basis of housing conditions.

The research that we are thus led to undertake on the arrangement of the elements of
the urban setting, in close relation with the sensations they provoke, entails bold
hypotheses that must be constantly corrected in the light of experience, by critique and
self-critique.

Certain of De Chiricos paintings, which were clearly inspired by architecturally
originated sensations, exert in turn an effect on their objective base to the point of
transforming it: they tend themselves to become blueprints or models. Disquieting
neighborhoods of arcades could one day carry on and fulfill the allure of these works.

I scarcely know of anything but those two harbors at dusk painted by Claude Lorrain(2)
 which are in the Louvre and which juxtapose extremely dissimilar urban ambiances
 that can rival in beauty the Paris Metro maps. I am not, of course, talking about
mere physical beauty  the new beauty can only be a beauty of situation  but
simply about the particularly moving presentation, in both cases, of a sum
of possibilities.

Along with various more difficult means of intervention, a renovated cartography seems
appropriate for immediate utilization.

The production of psychogeographical maps, or even the introduction of alterations such
as more or less arbitrarily transposing maps of two different regions, can contribute to
clarifying certain wanderings that express not subordination to randomness but
total insubordination
to habitual influences (influences generally categorized as tourism, that popular drug as
repugnant as sports or buying on credit).

A friend recently told me that he had just wandered through the Harz region of Germany
while blindly following the directions of a map of London. This sort of game is obviously
only a feeble beginning in comparison to the complete creation of architecture and
urbanism that will someday be within the power of everyone. Meanwhile we can distinguish
several stages of partial, less difficult projects, beginning with the mere displacement
of elements of decoration from the locations where we are used to seeing them.

For example, in the preceding issue of this journal Marcel Mariën proposed that when
global resources have ceased to be squandered on the irrational enterprises that are
imposed on us today, all the equestrian statues of all the cities of the world be
assembled in a single desert. This would offer to the passersby  the future belongs
to them  the spectacle of an artificial cavalry charge which could even be
dedicated to the memory of the greatest massacrers of history, from Tamerlane to Ridgway.
It would also respond to one of the main demands of the present generation: educative value.

In fact, nothing really new can be expected until the masses in action awaken to the
conditions that are imposed on them in all domains of life, and to the practical means of
changing them.

The imaginary is that which tends to become real, wrote an author whose
name, on account of his notorious intellectual degradation, I have since forgotten.(3) The
involuntary restrictiveness of such a statement could serve as a touchstone exposing
various farcical literary revolutions: That which tends to remain unreal is
empty babble.

Life, for which we are responsible, presents powerful motives for discouragement and
innumerable more or less vulgar diversions and compensations. A year doesnt go by
when people we loved havent succumbed, for lack of having clearly grasped the
present possibilities, to some glaring capitulation. But the enemy camp objectively
condemns people to imbecility and already numbers millions of imbeciles; the addition of a
few more makes no difference.

The primary moral deficiency remains indulgence, in all its forms.

GUY DEBORD
1955

[TRANSLATORS NOTES]

1. The quotation is from Marxs The Poverty of Philosophy
(chapter 2).

2. Two such paintings (Lorrain painted several of the same
type) are included in Debord’s film The Society of the Spectacle.

“Introduction à une critique de la géographie
urbaine” originally appeared in the Belgian surrealist journal Les Lèvres Nues #6
(September 1955). This translation by Ken Knabb is from the
Situationist
International Anthology (Revised and Expanded Edition, 2006). No copyright.